Indian lawyer launches crusade against rights abuses in Kashmir

"You may read about it but you only really understand it when you get to Srinagar," Sood told AFP, referring to the summer capital of India's zone of Kashmir.

"You realise that atrocities are being committed against an entire race and ... they are being committed by our army," she said.

The "pain and suffering and trauma" she saw in Kashmir prompted her to launch her own one-woman campaign to persuade Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to rein in the troops.

Since that first trip to Kashmir in February this year, the 40-year-old Supreme Court advocate has criss-crossed India, Pakistan and Britain in a bid to persuade prominent personalities to write letters to Singh urging him to order a halt to human rights violations there.

The dynamic yet unlikely activist -- she was once married to a Maharashtra prince and lived in a palace near Mumbai -- began her campaign in India, twisting the arms of colleagues and political leaders until they fired off letters to the Indian premier.

She then crossed the border into Pakistan where she sweet-talked a string of parliamentarians, including Chaudhry Shujat Hussain, president of the majority party in the National Assembly, to write to Singh.

"I would urge you to take a bold initiative by seeking the withdrawal of Indian troops from Jammu and Kashmir, from those areas where human rights violations have been documented," wrote Hussain.

She also got former Pakistan cricket captain Imran Khan, now leader of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf or Movement for Justice party, to urge a pullout of Indian troops from Kashmir, where they have been battling an Islamic insurgency since 1989.